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Kris Gambardella didn’t know Feral Pines, one of the 36 people who died in the Dec. 2 Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. But when Pines, a 29-year-old transgender woman, was identified in official accounts by the male name she had been given at birth, Gambardella, who is a trans man, took it personally.

Starting in late summer 2014, a protest movement known as Black Lives Matter convulsed the country. Triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, the movement claimed that blacks are still oppressed by widespread racism, especially within law enforcement. The police subject black communities to a gratuitous regime of stops and arrests, resulting in the frequent use of lethal force against black men, according to the activists and their media and academic allies. Indeed, America’s police are the greatest threat facing young black men today, the protesters charged. New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio announced...

Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was released from a Los Angeles jail early today after completing his time for involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed passenger on New Year's Day 2009. E-mail and phone notifications made at 12:01 a.m. today said Mehserle had been released, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's online inmate locator also said he had been released as of that time. Officials have declined to discuss specifics about Mehserle's release. Mehserle, 29, was sentenced to two years for shooting Oscar Grant in the back while the 22-year-old Hayward man lay face down on the...

A man being robbed by two Oakland men in the parking lot of the Fruitvale BART station managed to grab a knife from one of the assailants and stabbed the other one to death, authorities said today.

Oscar Grant, 22, was shot once while on the platform after a BART officer drew his gun during what officials called a volatile and chaotic scene. A gravely wounded Grant was taken to Highland Hospital, where he died.

A young man allegedly involved in a possible scuffle aboard a BART train was shot to death by a BART police officer on the platform of the Fruitvale Station early today.

Oakland, in the Jerry Brown years, practiced an unofficial policy of what might be called “community cleansing.” This is not to be confused with “ethnic cleansing,” the horrific activity in parts of, say, Eastern Europe or Central Africa where whole ethnic populations are violently and bloodily removed, either through exile or actual genocide. No, Mr. Brown’s “community cleansing” policies were far more genteel, involving little violence (though some—that’s what the whole Oakland Riders police scandal was about) and targeting not whole ethnic groups, but rather portions of the population that were considered as being “undesirables.” Part of this involved harassment,...

OAKLAND — A 15-year-old gang associate was in critical condition Friday after he was wounded twice by his own gun during a struggle with a 32-year-old he pointed the weapon at, police said. The man, who police said was a former paratrooper in the Honduras army, was not hurt and waited for police to respond to where the confrontation happened. He gave a statement to investigators before he was arrested on suspicion of assault while the district attorney's office determines whether he acted in self-defense. Police would not release the name of the teen or the adult pending the district...

OAKLAND — She was a familiar sight in the upper Fruitvale neighborhood: a quiet, tiny, 80-year-old Chinese woman who wore a straw hat while collecting cans and other recyclables to earn spending money for her grandchildren. She would smile when residents would try to talk to her, but her lack of English made conversation impossible. The woman, who never bothered anyone, was fighting for her life Friday, the day after three men beat her unconscious with fists and feet and the broomstick she used to carry the plastic bags filled with her haul, then stood over her and laughed, police...

Fruitvale parishoners, Franciscan peace activists use pistols, rifles to create memorial for shooting victimsOAKLAND -- About 30 parishioners from St. Elizabeth's Church in the Fruitvale district took a symbolic whack at gun violence Sunday by hammering handguns into art. The gun-smashing event was sponsored by the Franciscan Justice, Peace & Integrity Office, which has been collecting handguns for the last two months in order to transform them into various sculptures, including an altar for gunshot victims. According to Brother Martin Ibarra, the idea is to get guns off the streets and to make a symbolic gesture that will get people...